Porn Email Scandal Claims Another High-Ranking Pa. Official: Randy Feathers

Another state official has resigned in the wake of the porn email scandal: Randy Feathers, a member of the Pennsylvania Board of Probation and Parole. Feathers resigned his seat but didn’t admit any wrongdoing. The job paid $115,000 a year.

Per his official bio on the state parole board website, Feathers started his career as a Washington, D.C., police officer and primarily worked in narcotics. He was unanimously approved to the parole board in 2012 after being nominated by Governor Tom Corbett.

Feathers had at first refused to resign and called on an independent forensic expert to review the emails. “This attorney general doesn’t have the best credibility with me,” Feathers said last week. “I’m not going to resign from a position because she says I did something. This is politics, and I’m caught in the middle of it.” Corbett had called on him to step down.

Feathers has blamed Attorney General Kathleen Kane, a Democrat, for playing politics. “It is essential to note that my retirement should not be taken as an acknowledgment of the degree of wrongdoing of which I have been accused by Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane,” Feathers wrote in a letter released to media outlets. “In fact, I have been denied basic due process by not being allowed to observe or be provided details as to the content of the emails upon which General Kane has attributed to me.”

Kane’s office said Feathers received 436 sexually-explicit emails and forwarded 39 of them between 2008 and 2010, while he was an investigative supervisor in the attorney general’s Altoona office.

Feathers is the third member of the governor’s administration to step down as a result of the email scandal, joining Environmental Protection Secretary Christopher Abruzzo and DEP’s deputy chief counsel, Glenn Parno.

[Inquirer | PennLive | The Morning Call]